Tag: Israel

If you’ve been cruising Facebook, Twitter, or Google+ lately, you’d have seen some breathless headlines claiming that Israeli scientists have discovered a miracle cure for cancer. And it will be ready in one year.

What a load of rubbish, balderdash, codswallop, claptrap, and nonsense.

I’d end the article right there because nothing more really needs to be written. But you come here for the snark, but stay for the science. Or come here for the science, and stay for the snark. Either way, I need to spend a few minutes of your time, and a couple of thousand words, to put this pile of equine excrement into a waste pit.

With the support of a local pro-vaccine non-profit made of parents and professional volunteers, two parliament members are proposing an Israel vaccine law to improve immunization rates. This and other proposals are a response to a measles outbreak made up mostly of unvaccinated individuals. The proposal explicitly seeks to improve disease prevention while minimizing the effect on autonomy. It does so with a mix of measures that mirror laws existing in other countries and new ideas.

Given the 95% vaccine uptake rate, it begs the questions of why I push so hard for vaccination–because I want to protect the lives of children, and those 5% who aren’t vaccinated are at risk of serious disease and even death. And vaccines are the safest way to protect a child–protect them from death.

Nearly 55% of the readers of this blog are not American (a couple of years ago,this blog got a regular reader from Iran, which meant that all countries were represented amongst this blog’s readers). I have been accused of being a bit American-centric, but at the same time, I was also curious about vaccine uptake worldwide. Continue reading “Worldwide vaccine uptake-2014”

Here we go again. There have been some articles published in peer-reviewed journals which have caused the antivaccination cult to not only misinterpret the data (shocking), but then broadcasting another lie (more shocking) which could lead to lower vaccinations rates.

Smart baboons searching for the pertussis vaccine.

According to research, some individuals who have been vaccinated against whooping cough (Bordetella pertussis), with either the DTaP or Tdap vaccine (which also protect against tetanus and diphtheria), remain infected with the pertussis bacteria, although they are asymptomatic. This is been morphed into the internet meme that only those who have been vaccinated carry the disease. Or worse yet, that the vaccine causes the asymptomatic infection. Typical of pseudoscience, the vaccine deniers take a little bit of scientific fact, and mutate it into something that meets their own biases.